Comment by Tommy Hodgins on "Why are front-end JS dev's so afraid of the DOM? It's not like she's got a whip!"

I definitely work with the DOM, but even still I'm not sure if the ways I work with it would set off your alarms or not :D

(Luckily) I don't think jQuery has a lot of traction anymore—even the creator of jQuery has put it down in favor of using React for a few years now—so if anything, I think a more relevant question might be something like:

"Why do developers insist on trying to innovate on top of the DOM we already have with things like virtual DOM?"

Surely some of these frameworks and libraries are reimplementing things we already have, (and sometimes much more poorly), but at the same time I think some of the ways people are experimenting with building can lead to new ideas that will someday get built into the DOM like how some of the handiest helpers from jQuery, and syntax ideas from CoffeeScript have inspired JavaScript features that came later.

While I definitely don't go out of my way to use jQuery or CoffeeScript, I can't deny their influence on the native JS features I learn and use today.

While you definitely won't go out of your way to use things like Vue or React today, I hope you won't deny the impact they will have on the native DOM features of the future!

Impact? What impact? Encouraging people NOT to use the DOM and to screw around building markup as strings and waste time on string processing?

If there's an 'impact' from them it sure as shine-ola isn't a positive one -- at least NOT in terms of client-side code. I can almost understand the appeal server-side but they still reek of taking something simple (HTML and client-side processing) and making it as difficult to use as possible... typically by using two to twenty times the code necessary to do the job or by doing crap on websites that has ZERO damned business on websites if you care about meeting accessibility norms.

Though I think that's a lot of it. Alleged "designers" and front-end developers basically huddling together to flip the bird at accessibility and in the process screaming "f**k users!" at the top of their lungs.

These new frameworks allow you to create projects faster without having to reach into the DOM manually. The declarative nature of them allow you to create things without having to manually rig stuff up. To me that is an advantage because it speed things up development time, but there is no right or wrong answer. Whatever works for you.

Luis That's MOST of what I don't get -- on top of the resultant performance issues -- the simple fact is I don't see how it makes creating projects faster. This is something I've said for ages about jQuery, for ages about HTML/CSS frameworks, and it just continues to get worse and worse year after year!

It LITERALLY feels like people are saying that starting out with more code to write even more code of your own than you'd have without the framework is somehow magically easier. How does that work exactly [b]because I flat out don't get how doing MORE WORK IS EASIER!!![/b]

... and again the only conclusion I can come to in order to accept that it is "easier" for others is that they don't know enough about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or accessibility norms to even have an informed opinion on what "easy" is. In some ways it reeks of "false simplicity" where the result is dumbed down so much, it is no longer even capable of doing the task -- at least not without jumping through so many hoops you're working five times as hard, or worse making the user work harder.

When people talk about this stuff as "faster" or "easier" I honestly start to question if they even know what those words MEAN! I'm having that much of a mental disconnect between the methodology presented and the message people parrot about them like some form of quasi-religious propaganda.

... and that's really the worst part, it feels like -- even when the client has called you in because their own staff screwed them over -- arguing the point with second rate cultists, or people who buy into bull like "organic foods", flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, creationists, or any of the other outright ignorant halfwitted lies and pseudo-science quackery that is so popular right now.

Say hello to the new Ludditism.

See a client I had back in August who it took four months to drag their site kicking and screaming into WCAG complaince, only to within three days of the court writing off on the project and two days after I was paid, had their marketing and IT director go through and piss on it putting ALL the crap that was removed back in, then wondering why they were back in court facing DOUBLE fines -- for willfully disobeying a court order -- because those two turds had fought me EVERY inch of the way with their vue.js bullshit, bootcrap bullshit, gee ain't it neat scripttardery, and every other bit of outright ignorant crap that made me REPEATEDLY tell the board of directors and CEO to fire their asses.

Which was eventually done, only after it cost them half a million in fines and paying me three times my normal rate to fix it a second time.

Let's just say if you run a banking group, you might actually want to pay attention to details on your front-end and not just blindly slop together off the shelf crap out of ignorance and wishful thinking.

Where you say:

Alleged "designers" and front-end developers basically huddling together to flip the bird at accessibility and in the process screaming "f**k users!" at the top of their lungs.

I don't think it's even intentional. I answer questions almost every day about “how to I make tabs without JavaScript, just CSS?” or “how can I make an accordion but without any JS, just CSS?” and I'm usually the one having to explain why some of these solutions aren't as good as others.

I do also think a lot of people do many times more work than they need to simply because they don't deeply understand the things they're working with. Building websites doesn't have to be nearly as complicated as most people make it.

the simple fact is I don't see how it makes creating projects faster. This is something I've said for ages about jQuery, for ages about HTML/CSS frameworks, and it just continues to get worse and worse year after year!

I think that "making things faster" part comes with the developer not having to reinvent the wheel, web development is getting very hard and a lot of times it is repetitive.

DOM manipulations, state management, App re-rendering, accessing/storing data. All of these are parts of every application these days and a lot of them have been abstracted away.

When the same repetitive keep coming up people find ways to solve these tasks more efficiently. Think about design patterns or some higler level abstraction.

When you abstract something you make it "easier", by hiding internal workings in favor of some API, but with abstractions you have to pay a price, and sometimes it's worth it.

I think that is what is happening with all of these new frameworks is that they abstract the re-rendering/DOM manipulations and state management so that you can focus un building stuff.

After these abstractions have been adopted for a while the entry barrier into web development is somehow lowered because of less knowledge of these internal working. I believe this is where you will see developers struggle with DOM manipulations, and cling to frameworks, but in my opinion they do more good than bad.

Tommy Hodgins wrote:

Building websites doesn't have to be nearly as complicated as most people make it.

THANK YOU! That's basically what I'm really saying... but at the same time the woeful ignorance of the most basic of accessibility norms or even what semantic markup IS or how to leverage selectors is outright terrifying.

Made all the worse by outright mentally enfeebled derpitude like:

<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-md navbar-dark fixed-top bg-dark">
    <a class="navbar-brand" href="#">Site Title</a>
    <button class="navbar-toggler" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarsExampleDefault" aria-controls="navbarsExampleDefault" aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation">
        <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
    </button>

    <div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbarsExampleDefault">
        <ul class="navbar-nav mr-auto">
            <li class="nav-item active">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></a>

Where as I'm always saying if you don't know what's wrong with that, do the world a favor, back the hell away from the keyboard, and go take up something a bit less detail oriented like macramé!

Search Hashnode